Purple Dog Lavender Farm

5:30 this morning my wife rolled over and said my phone was ringing downstairs.  Who could be calling me so early?  As I rolled out of bed I looked out the window and saw 5 inches of soft fluffy snow covering everything.  I am a teacher  three quarters of the year, during the summer lavender farmer and grower of herbaceous plants and aromatic vegetables.  So the phone call was to tell staff and students that we had our first snow day this year... in April!  My first concern went to our orchard.  The apples just came into bloom.  What to do?  Leave the snow on as insulation to the cold or shake off the snow to avoid snow damage to branches and maybe save some blossoms as the air was warmer.  I decided to run through the orchard and shake all the snow off.  In retrospect I guess that was a good thing, better to protect branches from breaking and hope for the best when it comes to blossom set.  Better to have whole healthy trees and the possibility of no fruit this season than broken trees.  Now for another cup of coffee and stoke the wood stove again.